Brendan Happel, 26, struggled after dad's early death

In one photograph, little Brendan Happel wears a pink purse on his blond head as he drums with a spoon and turkey baster.

In another, the boy with Caribbean-blue eyes lies on the floor playing with a toy fire truck.

"I couldn't believe this happened to my son. He was just the greatest kid," said Peggy Happel Buccellato, a retired social worker and lifelong resident of the City of Poughkeepsie.

Happel lived 26 years. During seven of them, he battled an addiction so powerful it took his life Dec. 8. He died of a heroin overdose that, like so many other drug-related deaths in Dutchess County last year, was ruled accidental.

Just three days before, the tall, strapping young man who liked to work out had completed an outpatient drug-rehabilitation program.

"I was shocked when I got the phone call," Buccellato said. "He had been in a really good place. He was working. He had been happy."

Happel was a chef at a restaurant, and considered attending the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park.

The youngest child in the family, he was full of creativity, whether it was writing stories, drawing or playing the piano, guitar, harmonica and drums. And he had a tender heart for people and animals. While traveling in Spain, he saved his leftovers to feed feral cats.

"He just emulated a sense of joy," his mother said.

His grade school report card reads, "He is hard working, well mannered, well behaved. What a great kid!"

Happel loved sports. He could be found on ponds playing ice hockey or practicing tricks on a BMX bike in his driveway. But baseball was his favorite.

"It was something his father was really good at. Of all my children, he was the most like my husband," Buccellato said.

Then, cancer struck his father, who died in June 2006. The tragedy proved too much for his son to bear. Drugs made him numb.

"It's the sensitive, really caring people who have immense pain, and they just can't deal with it," his mother said.

During his recovery, Happel touched many lives, and Buccellato is comforted by the knowledge that his death will help others stay sober.

"You live with the awareness that the disease can (kill them) anytime, that if it happened, it wouldn't mean they weren't a beautiful person," she said.

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